ESC Ethnographer-in-Residence fellowship is led by Dr. Steph Jordan (they/she), who is a researcher and organizer who uses ethnographic and art-science approaches to tell stories of engineering’s impact on water and watersheds. Their field sites include ship-based sensor networks in the Arctic, wind turbines off the coast of Massachusetts, ocean observatories globally, and the toxic superfund sites of the Passaic River in New Jersey. They are a founding board member of the Labor Tech Research Network and involved in multiple tech justice efforts globally. Their work has been published in Feminist Encounters; the Handbook on Art, Science and Technology Studies; Interactions; Journal of Science Communication; CHI; CSCW and more. They are an independent research consultant working in tech advocacy and environmental justice.
The ESC Ethnographer-in-Residence fellowship explores the potential impact of data centers, high performance computing facilities and artificial intelligence on Michigan’s environment and public health. The project will leverage ethnographic and interview methodologies as well as art-science community engagements to engage with the local community in order to identify and problematize key environmental justice concerns of southeast Michiganders. Previous scholarship, journalism and community engagement in Michigan has drawn forward key under-researched environmental justice and public health concerns about the specific geographies where data centers are constructed and operating including: animal habitat destruction and reproduction effects, livestock illness and premature animal death, drought and dehydration of the watershed, vibrational forces and fish migration, crop and garden health, airborne particulates and the human respiratory system, increased risk of Hepatitis B and certain cancers, the lies of the closed loop system, instability of electrical grid on personal health monitoring systems and refrigerators, noise pollution and infrasound impacts, mental health impacts, drinking water contamination and filtration system needs particularly for well water farms, construction impact on quality of life, and other infrastructural impacts that preclude or diminish access to healthcare and basic clean air or water. This fellowship will be deeply rooted in community-based methodologies that produce five primary outcomes:
(1) Art-science engagements in an area (such as Ypsilanti) impacted by data center development.
(2) Research data and analysis from ethnographic and art-science engagements.
(3) The development of materials and resources on issues relevant to neighborhoods and local interest groups informed by empirical data.
(4) An installation of community-engaged public artworks that provide an important entryway for conversation and action.
(5) Peer-reviewed published works that provide legitimation of key concerns and the community-engaged process detailed within.
The proposal includes 3 art-science workshops (one each month: June, July, August) that provide a place for local community to gather at a waterfront under threat of a data center; to be a part of making something together with neighbors, friends and family; and to have a grounding space to discuss core environmental justice issues that impact their lives from this geography. These discussions will be recorded and will act as the data for ethnographic qualitative analysis to identify key concerns that require community resourcing and legitimizing. This data will inform the direction of future ethnographic investigations and recruitment following this phase of study. In this way, the art-making is centrally concerned with its process as much as its product: the work begins by being in community and making art together to locate stories, actions and opportunities.
This fellowship will center community art-science workshops that engage residents in conversation around art-making. The workshops will provoke different kinds of conversations that will be recorded for research data: these engagements draw members of the community that do not show up to city council or write letters to their congresspeople. The data from workshops captures an expansive array of local stories. Each workshop’s data will be analyzed and used to identify talking points researched for fact sheets for broad distribution and for informing conversation in the following workshop.
The southeast Michigan community-made artworks will be collected and presented locally in an exhibit with an opening event at the end of summer. For example, the Ypsilanti community on the Huron River would be well suited to temporarily install the art within a central accessible location like the Ypsilanti Freighthouse or Growing Hope Urban Farm meeting house. Local artists and poets will be invited to activate the art and speak to their connections to the works and the river, engaging community at every angle of the project.
Finally, the contributions from this phase of the fellowship will be articulated through a return to the academic community that informed these practices and its intellectual histories. I will write and present the process and analysis from this work, representing the University’s ESC Fellowship, at the Annual Meeting for the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S) in Toronto (October 2026) on a panel hosted by the Labor Tech Research Network on data centers’ impact. There, this work will be contextualized within its feminist technoscience and queer ecologies theoretical and intellectual roots.
Workshop schedule:
Suminagashi Marbling Workshop 1. Suminagashi marbling is an environmentally-friendly Japanese paper marbling technique. We will gather the water of the river into small vats and float the sumi inks on its surface. With our hands, our breath, the wind, tools and oils we will see how the water moves with us and by us, considering the movement and heat of our actions to change the flow of ink, consider the ways in which we have been affected by this water and how it will be affected by us and the data center. Local residents young and old will laugh and squeal in awe at the process and product. The effect is a joyful, sometimes exuberant community experience, all while engaging with dark metaphors and the fear of dark futures.
Block Printing Workshop 2. I will use linocut to print basic posters, patches and stickers with locally relevant and environmentally oriented phrases. For example, I have handmade blocks that say “Grow Where You Are Planted” and “Slow Down”. Residents will be invited to use these and many other blocks of local birds, turtles, leaves, trees and other natural shapes. Community members can take a saying or blank patch, poster or sticker and then decorate using linocut and rollers, stamps or markers.
Foraged Pigments & Watercolor Painting Workshop 3.This workshop begins with a foraging walk around the waterfront where I will identify natural materials that have good tanins for making pigments (which can make inks or watercolors). After collecting, we will end at a station where we will use allum and ash to create pigments. Community members will go home with 2-color watercolor palettes made from water of the river and their own foraged materials. I will come with a watercolor palette already dried and usable so that the community can paint with a finished product while they wait for their palettes to dry and while they engage in community conversations over ecology and art.